MSU, OTC breathing easier after override fails

Sep. 13, 2013

Clif Smart

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Missouri State University can start hiring staff for its new occupational therapy program and Ozarks Technical Community College will not have to consider a tuition hike for the spring semester now that state lawmakers have upheld Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of House Bill 253.

“We were cautiously optimistic that this would be the result,” MSU President Clif Smart said Thursday.

The Missouri House of Representatives voted 94-67 to override Nixon’s veto, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to send the bill to the Senate. The GOP-controlled House needed 109 votes to reach the two-thirds threshold.

Nixon, a Democrat, had campaigned across Missouri to defeat the attempt to undo his veto. Republicans touted the bill as a tax cut that would benefit the state and its residents. Nixon said its impact would hurt the state by cutting resources to areas such as K-12 education and public colleges and universities.

Because of the threat of an override, Nixon in June withheld $400 million from the budget until he knew his veto would stick.

Of the money withheld, $4.4 million was earmarked for MSU, including $850,000 for MSU’s new occupational therapy program on the Springfield campus and $500,000 to expand allied health offerings at the MSU campus in West Plains. MSU-West Plains is a two-year school.

Smart said the university probably would have had to scrap both efforts — occupational therapy and allied-health expansion at West Plains — if Nixon’s veto were overridden and the funds lost.

The result of the freeze, Smart said, was that MSU put off for three months hiring staff for the occupational therapy program.

“Now that that money has been released, we will diligently begin to work on hiring faculty and a director,” he said.

Smart still expects the new occupational therapy program will enroll its first students in the fall of 2015.

At OTC, $414,107 was frozen. Since OTC receives less state money per student than any other Missouri community college, Chancellor Hal Higdon said, the amount frozen was a small percentage of the school’s $70 million budget.

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Higdon said the college was not in a hiring “freeze,” but a less-severe hiring “frost” as a result of the governor’s June decision.

“My thought process was that if we had not had a veto override we would have begun discussions in October about a tuition increase that would have started in January,” Higdon said.

OTC already has one of the highest tuition rates among Missouri community colleges.

Now that the money is released, Higdon said, the college can consider filling some vacant posts that have remained open during the “frost.”

“There are some positions where we have had faculty and staff leave that we will now look at un-frosting,” he said.

The defeat of the veto-override effort was a victory for Nixon, who immediately released funds for education and mental health.

“With the potential to punch a $1.2 billion hole in our state budget in the current fiscal year, House Bill 253 would have done immediate and lasting damage to Missouri’s ability to support vital public services like public education,” he said.